Wednesday, 19 March 2014

The path of good intentions is paved with distortions.

The path
of good intentions is paved with distortions.

Original
thinking from Barry Shaw.

Netanya Academic College hosted a conference titled ‘The
Challenges of Jerusalem” on March 18.

Organized by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Strategic
Dialogue, for whom I am the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues, and
the Freidrich Ebert Stiftung, this important event reviewed the current and
future face of Israel’s capital.

I was struck by one invited speaker, Dr. Rami Nasrallah,
Chair of the International Peace & Cooperation Center in Jerusalem, who
claimed that all Jerusalem Arabs are Palestinian.

He was followed by Professor Menachem Klein of Bar Ilan
University who, surprisingly, told us that Jerusalem is made up off 40%
Palestinians, a third are Haredi Jews, and about another third are either
Orthodox or secular Jews. “Palestinians,” Professor Klein! Where are the
Arabs?

Like Dr. Nasrallah, Klein made them disappear into a
conglomerate block known to them as Palestinian. Nice trick, except that the
professor opened his remarks by informing us that he would not go into the
rhetoric that, according to him, colors much of the narrative of Jerusalem. But
his Arab disappearing trick caught him out of doing precisely that – spouting
rhetoric. The vast majority of Jerusalem
Arabs are not, nor do they want to be, Palestinian.

Both Nasrallah and Klein are aware of the Pechter Middle
East poll released in January 2011 that clearly showed that only 30% of
Jerusalem Arabs would choose Palestinian citizenship, and that 35% would
relocate into Israel if east Jerusalem became part of a future Palestinian
state. This survey was conducted by
Dr. Nabil Kukali of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, in partnership
with Princeton-based Pechter Middle East Polls.

Riman Barakat, the Co-Director of the
Israel-Palestine Center for
Research and Information, noted in an article in the +972 blog
that, “many of
my friends and acquaintances are quietly applying for and obtaining Israeli
passports.” He went on, “residents of
East Jerusalem, numbering over 350,000, or 38% of the city’s total population ,
already go about their daily lives, shop at Israeli malls, use Israeli
services, frequent Israeli restaurants and bars, send their children to study
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and receive Israeli social and health
benefits.”

The majority of Jerusalem Arabs were born after 1967 in the State
of Israeli. Many of them migrated of their own free will into Jerusalem.

Those that dubiously claim to be ethnically Palestinian, like Saeb
Erekat, for example. He also claims to be a Canaanite, even though the Erekat
tribe drifted into the Jordan Valley from Saudi Arabia. Many Jews were born or arrived into Mandated
Palestine. If asked is they see themselves as ethnically Palestinian or Jewish
all would dismiss a Palestinian ethnicity in favor of a Jewish ethnicity.Nasrallah
and Klein are aware of these facts. They are aware of them, and are in denial.
This is disingenuous, but it is part of the atmosphere and rhetoric they
engender in order to impose their type of solution on the conflict, a solution
that goes against the trend and preferences of the Jerusalem Arab citizens of
Israel.

There is little
doubt that Nasrallah and Klein are people of good intentions, but you know
where that road leads when paved with distortions?

I am certain that
John Kerry is also a person of good intentions, and that he is a more creative
thinker than me. Or, is he?

Kerry said that it
was a “mistake” for Israel to demand that Abbas acknowledge the
existence of the Jewish State. If that’s the case, why didn’t he come up with a
creative alternative proposal, as I have done?

Surely, if Abbas
chokes on the word “Jewish,” he could be persuaded to agree a formula
that a Palestinian state will have no
future claim on Israel being part of Palestine once a two-state solution in
reached? This claim should be guaranteed by the United Nations. If it’s end of conflict you want, Mr. Kerry,
wouldn’t this do the trick?

If Abbas fails this
test he would be exposed for what most Israelis accuse him of, which is the
gradual carve-up of the Jewish state, salami-style, until there is nothing
left.

Since Arafat, the
Palestinians have grandiosely seen themselves as spearheading the Arab and
Muslim ambitions against Israel. It is this that prevents Abbas from
recognizing the Jewish State. He cannot portray himself as a traitor to this
cause. This overrides the desire for Palestinian independence.

If Kerry will not
protect the notion of Israel as the Jewish State, he, and President Obama, had
better construct the condition that would protect whatever is left of Israel
when their path of good intentions reaches its destination.